Fri Nov 11 - Although I made a really valiant attempt at a to-do list for my weekend, by Sunday afternoon I'd say only about half of it was crossed off. But I was still sufficiently pleased with my weekend to be okay with that.

Although my book was not *nearly* good enough for class this week, my boss and my instructors went easy on me and were perfectly happy with my contrite and remorseful posturing and now I'm in buckle-down-and-finish mode with the project. For those of you who seem to have gotten confused about what exactly I do at work (thanks Aliskye, for pointing this out), I write training materials for classroom instruction for a software company that makes software for manufacturers. (And fortunately, I do not write long prose sentences that look anything like that last sentence.) In the manuals, there are hundreds and hundreds of screen-shots: Pictures of what the computer software looks like when you're working on a task. My current project is for a program that was updated. When it was released in version 9.5 (upgraded from the old version 9.0), one of the newest features of 9.5 is that it can look like Windows XP.

It doesn't matter one whit that all developers in the entire known universe (and several parallel universes) HATE the look of Windows XP (or as I affectionately call it "Windows Fisher Price"), Marketing says we have to show what a great feature this is in 9.5. So this is why all 700+ graphics in my book have to be all reshot in the new XP look-and-feel. This involves working on my publishing computer on the publishing software, changing my monitor so it looks at my lab machine, using the actual 9.5 software on the lab machine, taking a picture of every screen, saving it as a file on the lab machine, cropping each graphic file, moving all the files to my thumbdrive, popping the thumbdrive out of the lab machine, switching the monitor, popping the thumbdrive in on the publishing machine, copying all the files, opening the publishing document, and one by one inserting the new graphics into the book. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

You can see a little bit about why I've been going insane.

Of course, we're going to ignore the niggling rumor that version 10 in June will look entirely different and the entire book might need to be written from scratch. *twitch twitch*

So when I did leave work in the afternoon, at least the pit of my stomach had calmed down significantly and I think I might be okay for the next three weeks at work.

I went straight to the puzzles and games store in the mall, but sadly they did not have the kind of gaming things I needed for the campaign at the Dudley's. So I struggled through traffic (argh!), arrived at my favorite laundromat (is it a bad sign that I have a favorite place for laundry??), and had a leisurely hour getting clean clothing for my weekend. Then I ran in at home and did the fastest packing for a SCA overnight weekend that I've ever done in my life. Good thing I had that thorough to-do/packing list! *grin*

I got to the Dudley's house in a reasonable amount of time, solely because I now know the LA freeways *way* too intimately for my own good. When I hear a brief 10-second description of the traffic snarls, I instantly veer off onto an alternate path and manage to save 20-30 minutes. It depresses me slightly that I know the freeways in LA and Orange counties so well now. It says something about those 329,600+ miles on my Festiva, of which 229,600+ of them are mine in the past five years.

Gaming was great fun, and I'm really going to enjoy spending time in Noah's campaign. He's very entertaining, and the game itself should be a very enjoyable way to spend a few hours with friends every few weeks. The group also managed to help me get rid of some of our leftover Halloween candy, yippee.

Aliskye (or just Laura, if you're playing along with our SCA name / legal name game) and I stayed at her parents' home just a few miles down the road. It was restful and lovely, and then we just planned our carpooling for the following morning.

Sat Nov 12 - We managed to get up early enough to still return to her condo to look for her forgotten shoes, have a quiet sit-down breakfast, shop for groceries for the day, and still get on the road at a decent hour. The event had not yet started when we arrived in Lancaster, so we were able to help scurry around setting up the scribes materials and the finished scrolls for presentation, then get dressed and enjoy the event. Coronation is the event (every six months) where our Kingdom says Farewell to the current King and Queen, and then crowns the Prince and Princess to become the new King and Queen. Because it is usually an indoor event with much pomp and circumstance, everyone wears their fanciest outfits with the most velvet, silk, pearls, jems, etc. and everyone looks lovely.

I had volunteered myself to be Aliskye's personal "minion" for the day, and actually had an absolute blast looking after her and getting things done on her behalf. I did a lot of running around trying to find people, such as former Kings and Queens who needed to sign these fancy scrolls from awards given out back when they were on the thrones, or looking for people in charge who needed to take care of something, or just getting water and keeping Aliskye hydrated. I served a little lunch to both Aliskye and one of the other scribes (I know the other scribe's name, but spelling it just keeps looking all wrong), and later Aliskye was even able to offer lunch to another royal peer who needed a snack. So the food and water plans worked out fantastically, and provided me no end of amusement.

I also got to walk around during the lunch break, offering everyone and anyone "chocolate or candy corn?" and finally got rid of ALL of the leftover Halloween candy. Phew!

Elisheva and Raphael were working in the kitchen with Selene all day, so I only got to say hello to them briefly in the morning, again as they took a lunch break, and briefly before they returned to serve the feast. Lilya bought a lucet and so I got to teach her how to use it to make square-braided cords. And I found a very cute little pinky ring for $12 to go with all the other silver braided or knotwork design rings. Eowyn bought one each of my band's CDs, and I got to buy a bardic CD from Emma (from Starkhavn, or the Las Vegas branch).

Aliskye and I decided not to stay for the feast (although we did receive one offer from Natalya to join her table), but instead went out for Olive Garden with a handful of friends: Bruce & Astra, Ismay, Hrofgar (I think), Jamal & Eowyn, Michele-Phillipe & Elizabeth (I think), Aliskye and me. It was a lovely dinner, although it was sometimes weird to be one of only two non-peers at the table (peers have the highest rank/titles in the SCA), when naturally the conversations turned to things that have been discussed on the peerage email lists. And although it was nothing I couldn't hear about, it just felt funny sometimes.

We had an uneventful drive home from Lancaster, and I had an uneventful drive home from dropping Aliskye off at her home. We did determine that both of us want to spend more regular time working on artistic projects in our lives. So we've decided to experiment with setting aside two Wednesdays per month as a goal for getting together and doing projects together. We may start with cardweaving.

Sun Nov 13 - Church was lovely this week. Although it was funny that nearly twice as many, or more, people were there this week telling me how much they've missed me, and I could say back at them "Hmm, I was here last week, where were you?" Afterwards three of the guys and I went out for brunch, and then I headed over to the park to find Tina at fighter practice. She was there, even if fighter practice wasn't (maybe everyone was at an event? Queen's Champion?), and so I finally got to give her a very silly Halloween giftie that I bought over two years ago. I also got to meet her Paramedics partner from Chicago that I had heard so much about when I lived with Tina, so that was lovely too.

Then I crashed in Dayle and Ken's living room for several hours, taking advantage of their wireless network and getting some promotional fliers created for our choir performance in three weeks. We also had silly little gifts for each other: I had a character figurine from Aliskye's office plus some lucet/kumihimo bobbins that I ordered for Dayle, and she had a poster from the Serenity movie for me.

I don't spend nearly as much time at their place as I used to, and I'm really looking forward to our work-weekend over Thanksgiving that Dayle is hosting. We're all going to isolate ourselves to get projects done for hours at a time, and then get up for tea and scones together, or a scheduled walk on the beach, and other rewarding breaks for working hard on our projects. I've decided my big project will be web-design and programming, especially finally learning PHP and MySQL so that I can learn to use Gallery and create photo albums on my sites.

And choir rehearsal was amazing: We finally had all seven of us there, and got to really map out how to split the voices on the different parts. I have a lot of work to do this week on recording how the parts go for two of the singers, and sending them a CD to practice with for the next three weeks, but I'm really really pleased with how this is going.

I splurged in the afternoon on a digital recorder that can save MP3 files and WAV files to my computer. This means I can finally record parts for choir and cut practice CDs, or record songs I learn at the bardic song swaps, or record my compositions for band or for bardic events. The number of things I wanted to record had finally hit critical mass, and so I gave in an got the technology required. My pastor also wants to consider podcasting the service on our website, so I'm reading a podcasting book to see what it would take to do that.

Finally, after rehearsal I got a chance to stop by Ann's house, visit the little dogs (I'd been missing the doodles for quite some time now!), and catch her up on my life. She's one of my "I don't read online journals" friends, and so I'm happy to take time out to catch her up every few months or so. We talked about everything under the sun, and ended on the ever-present topic of my being single. She had an interesting observation about several of her friends. She looks at some friends and thinks "Gee, I know why *they* are still single" but she says I'm the one friend that she has no idea why I haven't been snatched up yet. I laughed of course, and had to agree that I have no idea either. *giggle* I've started to modify a joke I have with some friends: When they say "You're amazing" and I answer "Yes, please tell all your friends" or "Spread that reputation around" now I've updated the answer to "Yes, please tell all your single friends who like me." It makes me laugh, it makes my friends laugh, and it keeps the stress level down. But of course, Ann observed the same thing I've thought of: She just has high-standards for who she would fix me up with, and hasn't found "anyone good enough" yet. *laughs* Okay, fine, I'll go with that.

Mon Nov 14 - I've gotten to take some time this morning to catch up on about a month's worth of email filing at work, and gotten a sense of what's on my plate. I also may have found someone to translate one of our band's CD reviews (the Polish-to-English translation), and another co-worker is looking for someone who feels fluent enough in Dutch to do the other translation. And a coworker who is doing stand-up comendy in her spare time now has an appointment to meet me for lunch later this week, so we can work on her website.

The fun never ends. *hee hee*

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Recently Listened to: Gravity Willing Requia
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Today's Blessing That I'm Thankful For: I'm not sure who taught me all my organizational skills and how to juggle projects, but I can picture my Mom having done this all my life. Several friends are also an inspiration to me, like Dayle, Hope, Ismay, Elyramere, Tina, Lynn and online writers like the Yarn Harlot, or the journals of friends like Eowyn and Guiseppe. My roomie Mel always seems to have projects she's working on and completing, which also inspires me. So my thanks to everyone who's ever inspired me and taught me how to manage my projects and ideas, and made me go home thinking "Wow, I wanna do that too!"